for further details. He went to St John's, Cambridge and appeared in Varsity matches, including board one against current Varsity match sponsor Henry Mutkin in 1957.

In a booklet about the Varsity matches published in the 1980s, the late Jeremy Gaige gave his full name as David John Pereira Gray. I'm not sure whether this was an error or whether DJP Gray subsequently changed his name from David to Denis - but his forename is definitely now Denis and his surname Pereira Gray (double-barrelled but no hyphen) - in his chess days he was always DJP Gray (and I have seen early refs to Denis Gray so the David theory looks wrong).

(n.b. Jon has just pre-empted me by quoting me! Not sure who wins that one ... send it to adjudication?)

Sadly, no first names are given. By "complete teams and names" I simply meant all the teams and their players are named for this year (1960). They may be of interest to someone, so I'll add them anyway.

The Prelims consisted of two groups of 6 - the top 3 of each qualifying for the Finals as part of the 'Championship' Group - bottom 3 of each going to the 'Secondary' Group

Leeds defaulted a board on the second day and Manchester brought in a substitute board 3 (A PIDCOCK).

I'll finish with BH Wood's praise for one of the Oxford players ... "Their leader JA Bailey must have an innate genius for the game. He hardly ever plays, but when he can be induced to turn out for them on board one seems to win with unfailing regularity".

They defeated Birmingham 6-2 in the final, but my source (CHESS, June 1951) doesn't even mention the venue, let alone anything about the format for the event.

Birmingham's top board, P J Oakley, went on to win the BUCA individual championship in 1952. The teams event for that year wasn't even reported in CHESS!

"The chess-board is the world ..... the player on the other side is hidden from us ..... he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance."
(He doesn't let you resign and start again, either.)

Roger de Coverly wrote:The 1971 event was held in July in Leeds, only 8 teams taking part.

The reason for the low turn-out was that organisation of the event was severely disrupted by a national postal strike, which lasted for several weeks. Incredible to think of now, in this ultra-connected age. There were of course telephones (land-lines only), but the cost of numerous trunk calls would most likely have been prohibitive in those days.

One of the teams taking part was a scratch side calling itself "All-Stars", comprising only 5 players and defaulting three boards in every round.

"The chess-board is the world ..... the player on the other side is hidden from us ..... he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance."
(He doesn't let you resign and start again, either.)

The venue was Hulme Hall (I was one of the team from Sussex that year).

"The chess-board is the world ..... the player on the other side is hidden from us ..... he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance."
(He doesn't let you resign and start again, either.)

They defeated Birmingham 6-2 in the final, but my source (CHESS, June 1951) doesn't even mention the venue, let alone anything about the format for the event.

Birmingham's top board, P J Oakley, went on to win the BUCA individual championship in 1952. The teams event for that year wasn't even reported in CHESS!

I've drawn the attention of the 1951 Oxford team to Leonard via a private message; hopefully he can remember his team-mates' first names!

I can guess that part of the 1952 Birmingham team had the likes of Peter Gibbs and Bernard Cafferty, as well as PJ Oakley. Cafferty certainly played for the Birmingham University team in the Birmingham League at some point. Birmingham University won the Birmingham League four years in a row between 1953 and 1956, presumably with teams containing the above players. Gibbs and Cafferty are still alive and well - indeed, Gibbs gave Adam Raoof the old trophy to give to me - so there's some hope of finding out that information.

I wonder if "I Marshall" (board 3 for Oxford in 1951) was Ian Mashall, who played (and won very nicely!) a game for me in the Oxfordshire League three years ago? He was quite elderly, though he'd have had to have been about 75+ if he played in the Universities' Championship in 1951. He runs this website with his wife: http://dzohar.com/?page_id=142

They defeated Birmingham 6-2 in the final, but my source (CHESS, June 1951) doesn't even mention the venue, let alone anything about the format for the event.

Birmingham's top board, P J Oakley, went on to win the BUCA individual championship in 1952. The teams event for that year wasn't even reported in CHESS!

I've drawn the attention of the 1951 Oxford team to Leonard via a private message; hopefully he can remember his team-mates' first names!

.

John Sykes, Ian Marshall (the same as Jon played, I recognised him from the website photo), Henry Morton, Keith Bascombe, Danny Cohen. I don't remember Worthing's first name.

I have a very vague memory that we travelled to Birmingham for the match and that I played Oakley, probably taking on his Alekhine Defence. This venue memory is supported by the Oxford team which was much below strength, particulary on the bottom boards. Bascombe and Cohen were at my college and only played for the second team there, so it looks as if I roped them in from a visit to the junior common room when we were getting desperate to fill the spots. Danny Cohen was a mathematical prodigy and was awarded a scholarship at the college in his mid-teens. He was very keen on chess, spent as much time on it as he did on maths (it was said that he read Principia Mathematica like it was a comic-which he also read).
He was always playing in the JCR and every week sent in solutions to Assiac's endgame studies in the New Statesman. I think he became a maths professor in London in his twenties.

I doubt if there could have been more than five teams at the most, that's assuming that Cambridge, Sheffield and London all took part. Quite possibly there were only two teams and a straight match Birmingham v Oxford. In t950 BUCA also organised the individual championship in Cambridge, which I've written about in another Forum thread, and at the end of that year a tour of the Netherlands where we played at Leiden and elsewhere as well as a BUCA v Dutch Univs match in Amsterdam.

Much of this very full programme was due to the energy and drive of the BUCA secretary of the time (I think his name was Geoff Parbrook but am not sure, CHESS of 1950 or 1951 would have it) who was at Birmingham and thus the spiritual predecessor of Alex.

Last edited by Leonard Barden on Sun May 15, 2011 1:06 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Colin Patterson wrote:Sadly, no first names are given. By "complete teams and names" I simply meant all the teams and their players are named for this year (1960). They may be of interest to someone, so I'll add them anyway.

The Prelims consisted of two groups of 6 - the top 3 of each qualifying for the Finals as part of the 'Championship' Group - bottom 3 of each going to the 'Secondary' Group

Leeds defaulted a board on the second day and Manchester brought in a substitute board 3 (A PIDCOCK).

I'll finish with BH Wood's praise for one of the Oxford players ... "Their leader JA Bailey must have an innate genius for the game. He hardly ever plays, but when he can be induced to turn out for them on board one seems to win with unfailing regularity".

JK Walters of Cambridge is most probably Keith Walters, who plays occasionally for Nottingham University in the Notts League.

JG Collins (Nottingham) is John Collins, a member of my own club, West Nottingham.